Drive

Drive explores what has motivated humans throughout history and explains how we shifted from mere survival to the carrot and stick approach that’s still practiced today – and why it’s outdated.

When the industrial age started, external rewards where all you needed to motivate workers. There was so much money to make, and such a great life to be lived, if only you had a little extra cash to pay for new conveniences, like TV, a radio, or pre-cooked dinners.

But as we’re shifting from the industrial age to the information age, slapping on a bonus for fast delivery doesn’t work any more – most people simply don’t care.

Expenses to cover our basic needs, like rent and food, have never been cheaper, what we really value now is time. But that’s not the only problem with external rewards and punishments.

If a car mechanic is promised a 50% salary bonus when he completes 200 repairs in 3 months, guess what he does? He tells more of his customers that their car needs repairs. The money becomes the driving force, and will lead him to do repairs where none are needed, and maybe even do a sloppy job, just to meet the quota. Instead of leading to better and faster work, this creates dissatisfied customers and stressed workers.

Even more intriguing, for tasks that require creative thinking, adding financial incentives puts so much pressure on workers, that they become incapable of performing the task. For example when given the task to fix a candle on the wall with a few tools, participants who were told to be given money for a fast solution performed a lot worse than those who weren’t offered any money.

The more money is on the line, the worse it gets. Participants of a study tasked with hitting targets with tennis balls completely cracked under the pressure of potentially earning 5 months worth of pay.

But wait a minute…aren’t almost ALL jobs nowadays somewhat creative? Exactly! Of course this applies to developed countries more than to emerging ones, but eventually, we’ll all end up with jobs that require us to only work with information, people and creatively solve problems. Daniel Pink says that to succeed at this kind of work, what we really need is intrinsic motivation. You know, doing something for the sheer enjoyment of doing it. Either because we’re passionate about it, have a ton of fun, or are just plain curious, like we were as kids. I remember one day finding my baby sister propped up on the countertop, about to take her first sip – of the dishwashing soap. After wrestling it from her I couldn’t help but notice how curious the…